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Storyboard

Communicating Across Platforms
Action: Tammy clicked "Publish" in the Scheduler tab of the publisher above and this post was generated
Description: The post is editable directly from the stream. The editing mechanism works exactly as it does in the publisher, except changes are published with the “Save Changes” button. Whenever changes are saved, the post is moved to the bottom of the content stream.
In the content stream, the scheduler utilizes paging so that availability can span multiple weeks. Additionally, it uses a smart layout to maximize the amount of information seen by coalescing multiple days in a row where there is no availability from either party. For instance, if neither party has scheduled availability from Wednesday to Friday, there will be a single empty column with the label “Wed-Fri”. To schedule on one of these days, clicking on the title or the column will auto expand it to all of the collapsed columns.
Whenever someone loads the stream and days have past on the scheduler, the scheduler will reflect it by gray-scaling those specific days.
There is also a legend at the top to indicate the availability of both parties. Brenda can schedule a meeting with Tammy by clicking and dragging on any section that overlaps with Tammy and clicking the “Save Changes”.
Staying Updated
Action: Brenda added an appointment through the Stream Scheduler.
Description: Tammy is notified that she should accompany her scheduled meeting with a message in the content stream. The “Add to calendar” button is a link to an .ics file

Image Removed Image Removed Image Added	Keeping Track of Connections Rather than focusing on providing a large amount of functionalities, this interface makes it easier for teachers to reach all parents by keeping track of their communication capabilities and limitations. After logging into her account, Tammy is taken to her home screen, where all of her contacts are organized with icons representing each of her students and their profiles. Description: The primary purpose of this interface is to keep track of contact information and allow for communication across platforms. This contact display helps Tammy to track and manage the contact information of all of her students' families, which can be challenging with so many contacts and contact information that may change on a frequent basis.
Image Removed Image Added	Initiating Contact Action: Since she makes the most regular contact with students and not their parents, the display uses photo thumbnails of each student to help Tammy easily recall which correspondences need to be made. After After identifying Sarah's picture, Tammy can overlay hover her mouse on in which over it. This causes a menu for the type of contact that needs to be made Description: The scheduler tab can be used to can designate her availabilities by clicking and dragging on the gridded calendar. To initialize a new available time slot, she clicks on the start time, drags to the end time and then releases. When the mouse is released, the corresponding cells in the grid are shaded in. Each selection is interval-sticky to the hour granularity. She can create multiple availabilities by clicking and dragging on another available time, and she can click and drag on an already created availability to move it to somewhere else on the calendar (e.g. move it to another day). Finally, when she has a selected an availability, she can remove it by pressing the X (revealed on hover) in the upper-right corner of it to delete it. Additionally, the columns can be paginated to days further than 7 days in advance by clicking on arrows surrounding the days of the week at the top (revealed on hover).	Image Removed	Image Removed

Analysis

Learnability

The stream resembles a speech dialog where each post is coupled with an author and a time
The calendar event creator and scheduler allow for direct manipulation
The publish button is used throughout for internal consistency
The calendar view has a metaphorical consistency with actual calendars
The list of contexts is used throughout for more internal consistency

Efficiency

The interface uses a completely tabbed interface to avoid cascading menus/tunneling
The parent can schedule a new appointment by clicking on the generated output by the teacher, in two clicks

Safety

to appear. Because Tammy is concerned about Sarah's Midterm failure but the resolution will happen over time, she selects "Priority" as the kind of message she needs to send. Description: There are three options for the urgency/importance of the correspondence Tammy would like to make. This is important because depending on a family's communication capabilities, their preferences may vary for the kind of contact they would like to receive at different times of day, for different kinds of messages, etc. Keeping track of the best ways to reach out to so many families in different situations (ranging from general updates to emergency situations) is made easier by letting CheckMark keep track of that information and only requiring Tammy to specify what her needs are for each correspondence.
Image Added	Communicating Across Platforms Action: After selecting that she would like to send a priority-level message, a "New Message" form pops up on the same page. This enables Tammy to quickly make her correspondence with Busy Brenda and continue working on her tasks. The subject label if a convenient way for Tammy to keep track of her correspondence with Brenda when she reviews her messages or receives a reply from Busy Brenda. If Tammy records a message, she can play it back and/or delete it before pressing "Send." Once she sends her recording, CheckMark will place this message on a queue to be sent to Brenda's number within a template that allows Brenda to use her telephone keypad to play/save the message and even record a reply to be sent back to Tammy. Description: Because Busy Brenda cannot afford to have internet access at home, her preferred method of communication is phone contact. Although Tammy is using her web browser to make her correspondence, she can use her computer's microphone to record a voice memo that will be sent to Brenda's phone. Additionally, because Brenda prefers not to be called during work hours unless it is urgent (not general or priority), CheckMark will store this message and not send it until after she gets off of work. That makes Tammy's job easier because they have very different work schedules. With this interface, she does not have to wait until Brenda can accept phone calls to contact her. In addition to sending all replies to her CheckMark message inbox, Tammy is able to specify in her settings that she would like to have replies sent to her email by default since she almost always has access to it. This makes the new message form pop up with the field already selected, although she may deselect it and/or select other reply destinations at any time.
Image Added	Staying Updated Action: After Tammy sends her message to Brenda, a dialog appears on the same page informing her the message was successfully sent. Description: Tammy can select "View," which closes the dialog box and automatically direct her to the message in her sent box that she just sent to Busy Brenda. She can also press "OK," which simply closes the dialog box and allows her to view her contacts again. Tammy's message boxes organize all of her correspondences with parents, including contact initiated by her and contact intiated by parents. It provides one central location for all of the different kinds of contact that she may send and receive to reach out to all different kinds of parents (i.e.: voice recordings, emails, texts, etc.). This eliminates Tammy's need to have to keep track of many different devices and accounts, especially in times of high-stakes correspondence.

Analysis

Learnability

The student photo thumbnails do not alone have the affordances for initiating contact; However, because these thumbnails take over the bulk of the home display, it is very likely the user's mouse will hover over at least one thumbnail, causing the "New Message" dropdown to appear and enabling users to see this shortcut to creating new messages
Universal icons are used for major functionalities: a house for the home display, an envelope for messages, a gear for settings, and a power symbol for logging out. This makes it easier for new users to figure out where tasks can be accomplished because of this external consistency
The sidebar layout is used for internal consistency to inform users to recognize that they can be selective about what content they want to be displayed, directing them to use the sidebar as a filtering tool.

Efficiency

The user must only navigate their mouse to the student they would like to make a correspondence about and click once to compose a new message.
Sending a new message does not require navigating to new pages, which makes the message-sending process much faster, particularly if a user has many messages to send to different contacts
After all contact information is entered in for students' families, the system takes care of how contact should be made. The user only has to specify their own needs for correspondence and can rely on the system to figure out the rest

Safety

User can specify defaults for directing message replies to convenient locations and accounts
All messages/replies are automatically aggregated in the message boxes, ensuring a backup location if correspondences are lost elsewhere
Distinct regions of the screen are reserved for filtering, navigating to different pages, and reading/inputting data.
The interface's publisher has subtle adjustments to reflect the context that the user would be posting to in the stream
The event creator reminders allow you to select people and the output allows you to know some of the people you selected
The abilities are grouped to provide distinct UI regions for reading, creating, or switching contexts
An availability schedule can be modified, even after it has been published to the stream

Child pages

Versions Compared

Old Version 5

New Version Current

Key

Storyboard

Analysis

Learnability

Efficiency

Safety

Analysis

Learnability

Efficiency

Safety